OT Lesson : Jeremiah 14.7-9, 20-22
NT Lesson : 2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18
Gospel : Luke 18.9-14
What are we supposed to make of this little sketch of a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the temple? Neither of them is much good at it. The Pharisee stands there preening himself before God and others, as he measures the piety of his behaviour, and tots up the generosity of his charitable giving. The penitent tax collector has at least faced the truth about himself, and cast himself on God’s compassion. That is why it is he who goes home justified – that is to say, at peace with God – rather than the self-satisfied Pharisee. But the scope of his prayer is rather limited – God, be merciful to me a sinner – and we are not told whether his penitence had any effect on his way of life. The story makes a point about how we should look at ourselves, humbly and honestly, when we stand or kneel in the presence of God. That is a good start, but it doesn’t amount to a prayer manual. For that we have to look elsewhere, for example in the teaching which includes the Lord’s Prayer. So, if this little story isn’t really about prayer, what is it about?
Luke sets it within the context of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God. It is one of several stories grouped together which suggest how we should get ready to respond to the coming of God’s kingdom. We are urged to prepare with the honesty and humility of the tax collector, rather than the self-congratulatory pride of the Pharisee. This story is immediately followed by Jesus rebuking his disciples for turning away people who wanted to bring their little children to him to be touched and blessed. Don’t stop them, he says … whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. (Luke 18.16-17). The point about the little child is precisely that he or she is neither scoring points for piety like the Pharisee, nor beating himself up as a failure like the tax collector, but simply lying there ready to love and be loved. Tiny children are like that, aren’t they? Cradled in our arms, they gaze up at us, confidently expecting that we will understand and meet their needs, long before they themselves can express them coherently, or even identify them. They simply put their trust in our love for them. And Jesus tells us that is how simply and utterly we need to respond to the love of God, if we are to enter into the kingdom.
The context suggests then that if we are to become citizens in God’s kingdom, we need to relate to God not with the defensive boasting of the Pharisee or even the breast-beating penitence of the tax collector, but with the confident openness and honesty of the little child. When Nicodemus was told he must be born again, he protested: How can I go back into my mother’s womb and be born again? Entering the kingdom like a babe in arms is a bit like that too. How can I possibly rediscover the unquestioning trust of a small child? How can I set aside all those sobering, saddening experiences of life, those times of conflict, trouble, disappointment, grief, when I have looked to God for help, and have been met as it seems with the stony silence of indifference?
Jesus says that we need the simple trust of the small if we are to enter the kingdom, but it would be a mistake to suppose that our faith has to freeze in that mode as we grow up and grow old in our citizenship. There are plenty of relevant role models in the Bible, including the two we met this morning in our Old and New Testament readings. Their response to life is certainly rooted and grounded in a strong and originally unquestioning, child-like faith. The prophet Jeremiah has to come to terms with disaster as the kingdom of Israel collapses into defeat and exile. Yet he never gives up his hope in Israel’s saviour, appealing in faith to the one on whom the nation sets its hope, the one who has the power to rescue them. Like a child in pain, he may yell and scream, but even his frustration is directed at the one figure whom he trusts to take care of him.
And then there is Paul, imprisoned in Rome, getting no justice from the emperor to whom he has appealed, frustrated in his mission, abandoned by many of his friends, facing almost certain death, his very life being poured out as an oblation. No child in its worst nightmares would imagine the terrible things which Paul had endured for the sake of the gospel. He has fought the good fight, he has finished the race, above all he has kept the faith. And it is that unshakeable faith which inspires words full of hope in a situation which by human standards is hopeless.
Yet it seems to me that in the mature Jeremiah and in the apostle Paul facing almost certain death, we no longer see that sunny, unquestioning trust of the child looking up into Jesus face to receive a blessing. Perhaps – like them – as we journey through life, we need to absorb into that simple faith our experience of life’s joys and sorrows, successes and disappointments, triumphs and disasters. The wrinkly faith of our older years never loses touch with that secure child-like foundation of faith, from which we draw refreshment and strength deep down in our hearts. But our faith changes as it matures with us. Perhaps we could think of it as being a bit like a horse chestnut – a conker. Shiny and beautiful, but in truth a little soft and fragile as it first emerges from its spiky case, it gradually becomes wrinkly, getting tougher as it dries out and survives one challenge after another. A little battered certainly, the aged conker may be increasingly shrivelled and worn, but still beautiful in a different way, and still in its essence the same old conker.
Jan Rushton explored another role model last week in the story of Jacob, who discovered his faith as he fled for his life, becoming intensely aware of God’s loving care for him as he observed the angels in his dream going to and fro on the ladder between heaven and earth. His faith matured as he learned how to follow God faithfully and patiently whilst living in his uncle Laban’s household, and it was further put to the test as he wrestled all night on his return with the stranger by the brook Kidron. That hard won faith in God’s purposes, which allowed him to make himself vulnerable to his brother Esau for love’s sake, walking forward alone to meet him, was very different from the faith of the young man who had fled his furious brother some 15 or 20 years earlier.
The babe in arms may have more to teach us about how to enter the kingdom of God than either the pious Pharisee or the penitent tax collector, but we need other, more mature role models as well, like Jeremiah and Paul and Jacob, to teach us how to grow in the stubborn, wrinkly faith by which we enter ever more fully into our citizenship of that glorious kingdom.